Online Poker Bankroll Basics: Strategies To Protect Your Bankroll
- Filed under: Poker
- Date: Sep 8,2010
Bankroll management is an often overlooked but extremely important aspects of poker. Bankroll management is fundamental to winning at poker, both live and online. It is an essential part of being a solid poker player and if not done correctly can have massive consequences on your actual game play and psychological well being. The article aims to provide a short guide to good bankroll management and give a few tips regarding trouble areas and common mistakes that you can avoid.
Variance is a common occurrence in poker and can be defined as the difference between your short term results and long term expectation. It includes both upswings and downswings. The upswings we don’t mind so much, but it’s the downswings that really hurt. Even when you get your money in with the best hand before the flop, you might only be a 80% favourite to win the hand. 20% of the time you will lose. In games such as Omaha, people go all in with hands that are often only 55% to 45% favourite and consequently, variance goes up. It is not unheard of for downswings of over 100 buy-ins below equity. This can have significant effects on your bankroll if you don’t have enough money to buffer these losses. As a rule, you should try and have at least 20 buy-ins if you are playing at one table of a standard game such as Texas Holdem. If you are multi-tabling, then this number needs to increase dramatically. If you follow this rule of including a buffer in your bankroll, you can avoid on the simplest and stupidest mistakes that adds unnecessary pressure and disadvantages in poker.
Keeping most of your bankroll at the table is suicide. The money starts to have more meaning and the biggest effect of this is that you may start making bad decisions in order to protect this dwindling bankroll. This often includes passing up on opportunities that have positive expected value, for example a situation where you are 60% to win the hand, you might fold and thus in doing so make a mistake. The opposite is sometimes true in that when you get down to your last few buy-ins, you make try to double up or go bust, and take unnecessary risks including getting your money in with the worst of it. You should always play with money you can afford to lose. If you play with money that is borrowed, or is in other ways required food or utilities then this is a disaster waiting to happen.
Another recommendation is to have your bankroll in a financial institution that is completely separate to the actual poker site that you are planning to play at. Keeping money in a poker site earns no interest for you, it runs the risk of being lost in a single drunken session and also if your account details are ever hacked or stolen. I recommend having only 20 buy-ins at the poker site you are playing, and the rest in a secure bank account, preferably with interest, that is easily accessible. One could also spread the money across several banks and poker websites so as never to keep your eggs all in one basket.
Having a pre-set amount such as a stop-loss is a useful idea. If you were to lose 3 buy-ins, then you quit the session and try again tomorrow. Similarly, if you win 5 buy-ins then you can also quit the session. Trying to maintain regular withdrawals are reasonable as well always trying to keep the same amount of 20 buy-ins at the poker website. Another method often used involves playing at the one level until you reach a set amount, for example 100 buy-ins, then move up to a higher stakes level, cash out all but 20 buy-ins and repeat. It is a clever technique for trying to move up in stakes. Alternatively the opposite is also true, if you are at a level and fall below 20 buy-ins, drop down to the lesser stakes and try and build your stack up again.
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